Day in the Life

My morning started with produce. I had to go pick up produce donated from a local farm for our bears. We have not been getting very much from Fred Meyer lately so we have had to start looking elsewhere for fresh produce. Bears got to eat ya know!

Once i get to work (8:30am) we decide who is going to start the bear shift and who is going to start the lion shift. I did lions today. So I headed to QB (our food prep building in the middle of the park) to find a nice treat for Etosha (our youngest lioness). Since today is Saturday that means we have a Feast of Kings event at 11:30am. A Feast of Kings consists of a ribcage on the sundeck and guests sitting on the bleachers watching the lions eat it. We use Keeno and Natasha on saturdays which means I have to leave them in the huts until we are ready to bring them out onto the sundeck for the event. So that means Ariyeh and Mugadi would have to be out in the drive-thru for people to see, thus Etosha would have to be in one of the breeder pens. Since Mugadi's incident the other day we decided that we would not give her and Ariyeh any food enrichment anymore. Why? Because Ariyeh always starts fights over food and we want Mugi to have the least amount of stress as possible. So Mugadi and Ariyeh got elephant poo and perfume for enrichment.... now, what to give Etosha? How about a nice juicy horse leg? yummy!

I get to the lion huts and get Mugi's meds ready just in time to let Ariyeh out into the DT (drive-thru). I have to let Ariyeh out first in order to go into his room to feed Mugi her meds. She gets three antibiotics pills (SMZ) twice daily so we have to give her the am dose before we let her out. We just put each pill into a chunk of meat and she gobbles them right up. Such a good girl! Then I let her out into the DT with Ariyeh. The jeep and tower rangers will keep an eye on them all day.

Next I have to walk the fence-lines of both "breeder" pens before i can let Etosha out. So I walk the perimeter of each pen, clean up any old enrichment lying around and then hide her horse leg up in one of the trees on a lower branch. Etosha is watching me the whole time and is so excited that she is literally bouncing off the walls. She can see right where I put it too (all those cats are such cheaters). As soon as the areas are clear I go inside the huts to let her out and she is soooo excited! As soon as I open her guillotine she is off like a shot leaps through the air into the tree and knocks the leg out of the tree then leaps on top of it, picks it up in her mouth and runs off. I can hear her chomping away on it for the rest of the morning.

Since Keeno & Natasha are still in the huts I have to clean around them so that means I have a lot of shifting to do. Cleaning the lion huts consists of hosing each room, changing the waters, and then using the squeegee to get as much water off the floors as possible. Sounds easy but there are 7 rooms and two hallways and the floors are slanted weird ways and there are no drains so it can be tricky. Meat leaves greasy spots that can be a bitch to get off and lion fur snags on everything! It takes a bit longer with two cats still inside but I get them all cleaned except for Natasha's room. She won't move over to the next room. So I give up for now and head back to QB to get the rib cage for the event. 

I bring the ribcage back with me, even the small ones are heavy suckers and I have to load and unload it by myself, it's a messy job.  I cleaned the sundeck first since all the junk from two of the dens drains out there then I chained the ribcage to the fence closest to the bleachers. We chain it there because if we didn't the lions would drag it inside the huts which kind of defeats the purpose of having guests come to watch if they can't see the cats. 

Next I go back inside the huts and by then Natasha is ready to move over so I then clean her room and voila, lions is ready for our event. Once the guests are ready, we give the lion spiel, Keeno comes out and does his thing and then we go have lunch.

After lunch we have to give breaks to our lion tower and lion jeep rangers. Sitting out in the lion jeep in the hot sun for an hour while the lions just sleep the whole time can be very hard... very hard to stay awake, that is. But today was quite the adventure. We had our new male ostrich that kept crossing the road in front of our gates so I had to keep driving back and forth to open the gates. Anytime an animal gets too close to the lion area we have to close our gates to prevent that animal from coming in and/or to prevent our cats from running out to get said animal. So this bloody bird kept us hoppin. Also... I don't know why but there are SOOOO many people that think it's a good idea to roll their windows down in front of the lions. Even though they are told at the entrance booth and there are signs that say to keep your windows closed at all times while in the lion and bear areas.  So every time someone rolls down their window I have to get on the loud speaker and ask them to "Please keep all windows closed while in the lion area, thank you." Grrrr! I said it, I kid you not, like every 5 cars. And we had over 50 cars come through in an hour. Utterly ridiculous.

to be continued after I shower and go pick up more produce for the bears from Freddy's (hopefully) ..........